Manufacturers of computing hardware that are designed and intended to execute a particular software stack generally desire to prohibit unauthorized software to be executed on the aforementioned hardware. In an example, manufacturers of certain mobile telephones have operating systems that desirably execute thereon to provide a user with a particular user experience that is known to be associated with a particular mobile telephone. Accordingly, an aim of the manufacturer is to prohibit someone from undermining that user experience, for instance, by removing memory from the mobile telephone and replacing it with memory that is loaded with a different operating system (an operating system that is not intended to be executed on the mobile telephone). This jail breaking of the mobile telephone detracts from the user experience and may also interfere with a business model of the manufacturer of the mobile telephone. For example, such manufacturer may wish to monetize particular content that can be executed only by the operating system that is intended to execute on the mobile telephone. If unauthorized content or software is executing on the mobile telephone, this monetization of content may be extremely difficult or impossible.
Furthermore, it is desirable to detect when a computing device has been infected with malicious code, such as a virus, spyware, or the like. Conventionally, to prevent malicious code from being placed on a computing device, a user purchases and installs anti-virus software and executes such software on the computing device, which can consume a significant amount of computing resources. While this model has worked relatively effectively in the past, today users may have multiple computing devices, each of which may be in danger of receiving malicious code. For example, a user may have a desktop computer, a laptop computer, a mobile telephone, such as a smart phone, a gaming console, a Blu-Ray disc player or other suitable computing devices that are connected to a network and may therefore become infected with malicious code. It is inefficient and costly for a user to install and maintain antivirus packages on each of these computing devices.